Tom Lodge
Biographic Data
| ID | 3612005 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Tom Lodge |
| GIVEN NAMES | Tom |
| FAMILY NAME | Lodge |
| SIGNATURE | LODGE T |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of the Witwatersrand |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0857-7341 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 67 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 230 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 67 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1976 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Experiencing the future mundane: Configuring design fiction as breaching experiment
This paper introduces a novel methodological approach for surfacing the acceptability and adoption challenges that confront future and emerging technologies from the perspective of mundane action, in which they will ultimately be embedded and used. This novel approach configures design fiction as a breaching experiment to surface taken for granted background expectancies that are fateful for acceptability and adoption. We explain the logic of thi…
Red Road to Freedom: A History of the South African Communist Party 1921 – 2021
Organizational capabilities in and around the South African state
An influential genre of popular writing about modern South Africa provides a picture of institutional collapse even inside central government. Meanwhile, chaotic civil strife disrupts the political
Mandela and the Left
Drawn into the Communist Party’s social circles through friendships during the 1940s, Mandela became increasingly interested from 1952 onwards in the party’s doctrines and in the Marxist canon that informed their premises. His first encounters with Communists were at a time when the party was beginning to develop its strategic justification for aligning itself with African nationalism, a development that would prompt Communists to begin recruitin…
Umkhonto we Sizwe: The ANC’s Armed Struggle
This is scholarly story-telling at its best. Drawing upon an unparalleled range of archival sources, oral testimony and contemporary reportage, Simpson has constructed a month-by-month, sometimes e
The Communist Party and the Germiston By-election, 1932
The Communist Party’s participation in the Germiston by-election of 1932 is an episode which for the Party’s own historians has acquired a mythological status. But is it myth in another sense, that is fictional propaganda, as is claimed in recent revisionist treatment of the Party’s history? In fact a range of contemporary sources confirm the details of activist recollections of the event. It was an occasion when Communists succeeded in bringing …
The Road to Soweto: Resistance and the Uprising of 16 June 1976, by Julian Brown
Julian Brown’s analysis of the pre-history of the Soweto uprising seeks to break new ground. He confronts what he calls a ‘consensus account’ of the rebellion. In this depiction, the uprising ended a decade of quiescence and was the product of a generational revolt prompted primarily by immediate and localised experience. Earlier historians of the revolt have also located the rebellion in distinct insurgent traditions, shaped by generations of cl…
Conflict resolution in Nigeria after the 1967-1970 civil war
After 50 years since the inception of Nigeria's civil war, how successful have been efforts to promote reconciliation? This article first considers the claims made by both sides about the war's nature. In the Nigerian setting, necessary measures for conflict resolution extended well beyond the amnesties and reconstruction provisions available in the war's aftermath. In a democratic Nigeria neo-Biafran revival raises questions about the efficacy o…
Living with interpersonal data: Observability and accountability in the age of pervasive ICT
The Internet of Things, alongside existing mobile digital technologies, heralds a world in which pervasive sensing constantly captures data about us. Simultaneous with this technology programme are moves by policymakers to shore up the digital economy through the legislating of new trust-building models of data management. These moves seek to give individuals control and oversight of their personal data. Within shared settings, the consequences o…
How social movements survive: The Treatment Action Campaign and the South African state, 2009-2016
This paper seeks to explain the survival of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) and to identify lessons it may offer on how social movements may resist demobilisation. It considers the role the TAC plays in the creation of social accountability dynamics around primary health care but with broader implications for strengthening rights-based notions of citizenship. The paper examines the TAC’s relative success in democratising public health care pr…
The Communist Party in South Africa, Racism, Eurocentricity, and Moscow, 1921–1950
Mia Roth's book about the South African Communists during the first three decades of their legal existence as a party draws on South African and Russian official archival materials to present a fre
Protest in South Africa: Motives and Meanings
South Africa is experiencing record levels of protest. Interpretations of protest fall into two groups. First, there is the argument that protests represent only limited rebellion and that though unruly, they are a mechanism for political re-engagement. A second understanding links "new social movements" that address general grievances to wider hegemonic challenges. This article addresses the issue of whether these upsurges in militant mobilizati…
Shedding New Light on the Historical Development of the ANC
Sylvia Neame’s core argument is that South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC) developed historically as a front or, as its own name would suggest, as a congress, not a political party. She dr
Secret Party: South African Communists between 1950 and 1960
Since 1990 a rich body of autobiographical writing and interview testimony together with freshly available archival materials can support an assessment of the role played by South African communists in anti-apartheid opposition during the 1950s. Numbering only a few hundred, communists were very influential in leadership positions in the Congress Alliance and shaped programmes and actions in accordance with their own strategy of a united front. T…
The politics of HIV/Aids in South Africa: Government action and public response
A decade ago it seemed likely that African governments would be destabilised by the impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. This article tests some of the presumptions in such forecasting with an examination of the South African case. It begins with an assessment of the effects on the public health system of the South African government’s efforts to cope with the illness. Efforts to implement universal treatment of people who are HIV-positive appear to …
Secrets and Lives: South African Political Biography
So much South African political biography is about secret things. Of course, political biography generally has long investigated intimate corners of private life. Since Lytton Strachey's Eminent Vi
Neo-patrimonial politics in the ANC
Following Jacob Zuma's ascension to the presidency in South Africa, the African National Congress (ANC) has been dogged by rumours of escalating corruption and the personalization of power. This article documents these trends and explores three ways of understanding neo-patrimonialism in South Africa's ruling party. First, the article addresses the possibility that such political habits have a long history within the ANC but were restricted durin…
Clandestine Histories: The ANC in Exile
For many people, the main credit for bringing democracy to South Africa belongs to Nelson Mandela and his comrades in the African National Congress (ANC). Against all odds they led a heroic and dis
The 2014 South African general elections
Alternation and Leadership Succession in African Democracies
Orderly turnover of executive office between political parties in elections following a foundation election is widely identified as a benchmark in the entrenchment of procedural democracy. An additional and related test of the extent to which democratic conventions have become generally accepted routines is the extent to which presidential incumbents comply with or resist limited terms of presidential office. This paper will consider turnover of …
Introduction: Social movements and political change in Africa
The African National Congress and the regeneration of political power
The African National Congress and the regeneration of political power, by Susan Booysen, Johannesburg, Witwatersrand University Press, 2011, 515 pp., R250.00, ISBN 978-1-86814-542-3 In South Africa
Working in a South African Politics Department During the 1980s: Recollections
This memoir opens with a discussion of the author's recruitment as a junior lecturer in African government at Wits in 1978, exploring his motivations in leaving Britain to work in South Africa. Politics was taught in ways at Wits that were distinctive for their theoretical orientation and empirical content as one of the major concerns was to consider how people without power act politically. Teaching was shaped by the wider background of national…
Reflections on Black Politics in South Africa since 1945
When it appeared in 1983, Black Politics in South Africa offered a revised interpretation of developments in black South African politics in the 1950s and early 1960s. In comparison to existing academic and popular writing on this topic, Black Politics proposed that ANC-led resistance had much less organisational coherence than represented conventionally and that through the decade political opposition to apartheid would be shaped mainly by local…
The Cambridge History of South Africa
This book surveys South African history from the discovery of gold in the Witwatersrand in the late nineteenth century to the first democratic elections in 1994. Written by many of the leading historians of the country, it pulls together four decades of scholarship to present a detailed overview of South Africa during the twentieth century. It covers political, economic, social and intellectual developments and their interconnections in a clear a…
Black politics in South Africa since 1945
Neo-patrimonial politics in the ANC
Following Jacob Zuma's ascension to the presidency in South Africa, the African National Congress (ANC) has been dogged by rumours of escalating corruption and the personalization of power. This article documents these trends and explores three ways of understanding neo-patrimonialism in South Africa's ruling party. First, the article addresses the possibility that such political habits have a long history within the ANC but were restricted durin…
Resistance and Ideology in Settler Societies
The ANC and the development of party politics in modern South Africa
In one party dominant democracies, political parties often lose vitality. Interviews with ANC branch members reveal a more encouraging picture of the party's inner life. Members engage voluntarily in a range of party-sponsored activities. The ANC's organisational deployment is directed at the mobilisation of a militant activist community. Its commitment to consultative decision-making has declined, however, though under certain conditions the ran…
Policy processes within the african national congress and the tripartite alliance
After its unbanning and before its accession to power, democratic policy determination practices were beginning to establish themselves within the alliance led by the ANC. This article examines the extent to which these procedures have survived the 1994 election and the degree to which they have been replaced by technocratic forms of decision making, taking the debates over macro‐economic policy as a case study. The decline of activist contributi…
Politics in South Africa: From Mandela to Mbeki
Political Corruption in South Africa
Many people believe that widespread political corruption exists in South Africa. In a survey published by IDASA in 1996, 46 per cent of the sample consulted felt that most officials were engaged in corruption and only six per cent believed there was clean government. In another poll conducted by the World Value Survey, 15 per cent of the respondents were certain that all public servants were guilty of bribery and corruption and another 30 per cen…
State of exile: The African national congress of South Africa, 1976–86
This article sets out the broad nature of population movements and changes in distribution which are taking place in the major continental areas of the Third World, while making comparisons and contrasts. It outlines the differing approaches to these movements, and the interpretations of varying ideological and disciplinary points of view. It describes contemporary practical problems and indicates possible future developments." The primary focus …
The Destruction of Sophiatown
In 1955 the South African Government began to demolish a black freehold suburb in Johannesburg, and to relocate its inhabitants in a state-controlled township. Resistance to these moves by the leading black political organisation of the time, the African National Congress (A.N.C.), was short-lived and unsuccessful. Despite its abortive nature, the attempt to oppose the destruction of Sophiatown was historically significant for several reasons
Living with interpersonal data: Observability and accountability in the age of pervasive ICT
The Internet of Things, alongside existing mobile digital technologies, heralds a world in which pervasive sensing constantly captures data about us. Simultaneous with this technology programme are moves by policymakers to shore up the digital economy through the legislating of new trust-building models of data management. These moves seek to give individuals control and oversight of their personal data. Within shared settings, the consequences o…
Protest in South Africa: Motives and Meanings
South Africa is experiencing record levels of protest. Interpretations of protest fall into two groups. First, there is the argument that protests represent only limited rebellion and that though unruly, they are a mechanism for political re-engagement. A second understanding links "new social movements" that address general grievances to wider hegemonic challenges. This article addresses the issue of whether these upsurges in militant mobilizati…
The South African General Election, April 1994: Results, Analysis and Implications
Journal Article THE SOUTH AFRICAN GENERAL ELECTION, APRIL 1994: RESULTS, ANALYSIS AND IMPLICATIONS Get access TOM LODGE TOM LODGE Tom Lodge is a member of the Department of Political Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand. He is especially grateful to Jos Kuper, Director of Marketing and Media Research in Johannesburg for allowing him to see and use MMR's reports on its polling for the Argus Company and guiding him through this very rich …
Provincial Government and State Authority in South Africa
Do South Africa's nine provincial administrations enhance or degrade overall state capacity? The new bureaucracies were an amalgamation of old homeland governments and the provincial civil services established since Union. In 1994 they were unevenly resourced and often extremely short of skills. This article traces their progress, since 1994, in overcoming the legacies of patrimonial government in the apartheid era and in addressing fresh challen…
The Paarl Insurrection: A South African Uprising
At half past two, early in the morning of Thursday, November 22nd, 1962, 250 men carrying axes, pangas and various self-made weapons left the Mbekweni location and marched on Paarl, a small town in South Africa's Western Cape. On the outskirts of the city the marchers formed two groups, one destined for the prison where the intention was to release prisoners, the other to make an attack on the police station. Before the marchers reached Paarl's b…
The Future of South Africa's Party System
The ruling African National Congress has been an overwhelming presence in the politics of post-apartheid South Africa. To date, the ANC government has enjoyed considerable success in satisfying its supporters' material expectations. As long as it continues to do so, it is reasonable to expect policy continuity. This may be long enough for the constitutionalism that at the moment may still be a matter of expediency for ANC leaders to become entren…
The Cape Town troubles, March-April 1960
(1978). The Cape Town troubles, March‐April 1960. Journal of Southern African Studies: Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 216-239
Conflict resolution in Nigeria after the 1967-1970 civil war
After 50 years since the inception of Nigeria's civil war, how successful have been efforts to promote reconciliation? This article first considers the claims made by both sides about the war's nature. In the Nigerian setting, necessary measures for conflict resolution extended well beyond the amnesties and reconstruction provisions available in the war's aftermath. In a democratic Nigeria neo-Biafran revival raises questions about the efficacy o…
Introduction: Social movements and political change in Africa
The Zuma Tsunami: South Africa’s Succession Politics
The rules of South African politics have been changed by the succession struggle in the African National Congress (ANC). Once again there is open leadership contest in the ANC, the left‐wing has shifted the balance of power in the organisation away from the centre, and respect for authority is no longer as strong. Through a close examination of the history of Jacob Zuma’s rise to power from 1973 to the present, the paper demonstrates how once cor…
Voter abstention in the South African general election of 1999
Three and a half million South Africans abstained from voting in the general elections of June 1999. Falling turnout was partly the effect of disenfranchisement, the consequence of registration exclusion, but it also reflected voluntary political disengagement. Political parties were substantially to blame for voter disaffection, for in their electioneering they neglected those groups who were most inclined to abstain. Comparative experience sugg…
The South African local government elections of December 2000
Placing the South African local government elections of 5 December 2000 in the context of institutional reform and fiscal austerity, this article reviews the party political campaigns and the results. In particular, through use of local monitoring campaign reports - undertaken through the South African Civil Society Observer Coalition - a detailed analysis of electioneering is presented. In looking at the results of the elections comparisons are …
The Southern African post‐colonial state
Southern African post‐colonial states are notable for their relative administrative capacity in contrast with states in other parts of Africa. Settler colonialism, industrialisation, capitalist agriculture, warfare and, in certain cases, centralised and extensive pre‐colonial polities, help to explain the degree of modern state effectiveness in this region. Southern African states generally exist in more diversified economies than governments in …
The African national congress in South Africa, 1976–1983: Guerrilla War and armed propaganda
(1983). The African national congress in South Africa, 1976–1983: Guerrilla War and armed propaganda. Journal of Contemporary African Studies: Vol. 3, No. 1-2, pp. 153-180
How social movements survive: The Treatment Action Campaign and the South African state, 2009-2016
This paper seeks to explain the survival of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) and to identify lessons it may offer on how social movements may resist demobilisation. It considers the role the TAC plays in the creation of social accountability dynamics around primary health care but with broader implications for strengthening rights-based notions of citizenship. The paper examines the TAC’s relative success in democratising public health care pr…
Clandestine Histories: The ANC in Exile
For many people, the main credit for bringing democracy to South Africa belongs to Nelson Mandela and his comrades in the African National Congress (ANC). Against all odds they led a heroic and dis
Books reviewed
Sam C. Nolutshungu, South Africa in Africa: a study in ideology and foreign policy (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1975. pp. ix + 329. Bibliography. £6.50) Ronald Hyam, The Failure of South African Expansion, 1908–1948 (London: Mac‐millan, 1972. pp. ix + 219. Maps. £5.50) Jordan Kush Ngubane, Ushaba: the hurtle to Blood River (Washington: Three Continents Press, 1974. pp. 323. £2.50) D. A. Kotzé, African Politics in South Africa, 1964–1…
The Cape Town troubles, March-April 1960
(1978). The Cape Town troubles, March‐April 1960. Journal of Southern African Studies: Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 216-239
The Destruction of Sophiatown
In 1955 the South African Government began to demolish a black freehold suburb in Johannesburg, and to relocate its inhabitants in a state-controlled township. Resistance to these moves by the leading black political organisation of the time, the African National Congress (A.N.C.), was short-lived and unsuccessful. Despite its abortive nature, the attempt to oppose the destruction of Sophiatown was historically significant for several reasons
Soviets and Surrogates: Black Nationalism and the Steyn Commission
The Paarl Insurrection: A South African Uprising
At half past two, early in the morning of Thursday, November 22nd, 1962, 250 men carrying axes, pangas and various self-made weapons left the Mbekweni location and marched on Paarl, a small town in South Africa's Western Cape. On the outskirts of the city the marchers formed two groups, one destined for the prison where the intention was to release prisoners, the other to make an attack on the police station. Before the marchers reached Paarl's b…
Black politics in South Africa since 1945
The African national congress in South Africa, 1976–1983: Guerrilla War and armed propaganda
(1983). The African national congress in South Africa, 1976–1983: Guerrilla War and armed propaganda. Journal of Contemporary African Studies: Vol. 3, No. 1-2, pp. 153-180
Books reviewed: Reissues and literature in South Africa
Sylvester Stein, Second‐Class Taxi (Cape Town and Johannesburg: David Philip, 1983). Pp. 209. £4.45. Mbuyiseni Oswald Mtshali, Sounds of a Cowhide Drum (Johannesburg: Ad Donker, 1982). Pp. 92. £4.00. John Howland Beaumont, The Great Karoo (Cape Town and Johannesburg: David Philip, 1983). Pp. 96. £3.20. Sol T. Plaatje, Native Life in South Africa (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1982). Pp. xiii+437. £9.95. Paul B. Rich, White Power and the Liberal Cons…
State of exile: The African national congress of South Africa, 1976–86
This article sets out the broad nature of population movements and changes in distribution which are taking place in the major continental areas of the Third World, while making comparisons and contrasts. It outlines the differing approaches to these movements, and the interpretations of varying ideological and disciplinary points of view. It describes contemporary practical problems and indicates possible future developments." The primary focus …
Black Consciousness in South Africa: The Dialectics of Ideological Resistance to White Supremacy
The Militarization of South African Politics
Resistance and Ideology in Settler Societies
Resistance and Ideology in Settler Societies
Charters from the Past: The African National Congress and Its Historiographical Traditions
The Struggle for South Africa: A Reference Guide. Volumes One and Two
South Africa Belongs to Us: A History of the ANC
South Africa: No Turning Back
Paper Monuments: Political Biography in the New South Africa
(1993). Paper Monuments: Political Biography in the New South Africa. South African Historical Journal: Vol. 28, No. 1, pp. 249-269
Lionel Forman's trumpet: National communism in South Africa, 1953-59
Lionel Forman has long been acknowledged as a key influence on socialist and nationalist thinking in South African political circles since the Second World War. Yet, to date, his published writing is surprisingly ephemeral; apart from a book about the 1956-61 Treason Trial, it is mostly scattered in political journals and pamphlets. Much of his most interesting work remains unpublished. One reason for this surprising neglect of an imaginative, cr…
State Security in South Africa: Civil Military Relations under P.W. Botha
Comrades against Apartheid: The ANC and the South African Communist Party in Exile
Apartheid's Reluctant Uncle: The United States and Southern Africa in the Early Cold War
Correspondence/Briewe
The South African General Election, April 1994: Results, Analysis and Implications
Journal Article THE SOUTH AFRICAN GENERAL ELECTION, APRIL 1994: RESULTS, ANALYSIS AND IMPLICATIONS Get access TOM LODGE TOM LODGE Tom Lodge is a member of the Department of Political Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand. He is especially grateful to Jos Kuper, Director of Marketing and Media Research in Johannesburg for allowing him to see and use MMR's reports on its polling for the Argus Company and guiding him through this very rich …
South Africa: The Struggle for a New Order
Political science (60 works) · Law (47 works) · Politics (44 works) · Sociology (38 works) · South African History and Culture (35 works) · Law (30 works) · History (28 works) · Political economy (24 works) · Economics (17 works) · History (16 works)